September 2010 archive

Like many of you, I have spent the past few weeks in utter fascination on how retarded the western world has gotten when it came to dealing with its growing muslim population. I have laughed my ass off over the Ground Zero Mosque debate (and much like the esteemed President of the US of A, I will not comment on the wisdom of building the mosque there :-P), and I watched in fascination how a small pastor from Florida put the whole world in frenzy by holding two copies of the Koran hostage. While no one does a good media circus like the US, the debates regarding those two events were extra hilarious in Egypt, because of how serious everybody was dealing with them. Suddenly the opposition to building a mosque in ground zero became proof of Islamophobia and discrimination (I wonder what the same population would say to the US building a church or-gasp-a synagogue in one of Saddam’s palaces in Iraq. The horror the horror), and the actions of one lonely pastor with a flock of 60 became damning evidence of how Christianity was not the religion of love and tolerance it claimed itself to be. That’s it. Discussion closed. Never mind the global condemnation against the burning of the Koran, or the various voices that rose in defense of the American muslim population right to build a place of worship wherever they damn please. None of this mattered. Throughout the Egyptian Media (social and otherwise), champions of the eternally oppressed muslim population put their fingers in their ears, and went “No, no we can’t hear you. LALALALALALALALAAAAAAAA!”

Now, while this was happening, a different yet equally retarded story was gaining major traction amongst the Egyptian society, over a woman called Camilia Shehata. Camilia is a wife of a Coptic church priest, who left her house for four days and disappeared. Conflicting reports came out on the whole thing, but basically here is the story: The Church claimed she was kidnapped, the police started looking for her, and when they found her they delivered her back to the Coptic Church. Then the rumors started circulating that Camilia left her husband because she decided that Christianity was a lie and the Islam is the way, and that she embraced Islam, and that the Coptic Church is holding her hostage and torturing her until she abandons her newly acquired faith, and return to Christianity. Demonstrations by angry Muslims erupted all over Egypt, and suddenly the Egyptian constitutional right for freedom of religion was discovered and touted by the Islamist population. To the Muslims, the case of Camilia was the ultimate proof of the righteousness of Islam, since the possible conversion of the wife of a priest is an irrefutable victory for the entire muslim nation. To the Christians, it was only another story of a Christian wife that became miserable and wanted to leave her husband, but couldn’t due to the lack of divorce in the Coptic church, so she escaped. The whole thing was a retarded non-story, but what famed the flames were 2 things : 1) The insistence of Pope Shenoda to hide Camilia from the media, which further supported the theory that she was being held against her will by evil copts, and 2) The aforementioned retarded international situation regarding the freakin mosque and the retarded Pastor. There is also the assholish desire of the newspapers to sell copies no matter what the consequences are, but that’s what they do, so we can’t really blame them for doing their jobs as badly as they usually do.

Either way, the Ground Zero Mosque story was finally simmering down, the Koran burning Pastor has decided to let go of his holy literary hostages, while insisting that he can still do this whenever he pleases, and Camilia appeared in a video denying that she ever converted and affirming her Christianity. So, in a nutshell, the world was finally recovering from its retarded sectarian fever, and we were all poised to just sit there and make fun of how stupid the world allows itself to get over religion like we usually do, until the Azhar Scholars Front decided to shit on everybody’s parade and release this statement. The English translation for the statement is below and provided by my good friend S. because it simply had to be translated. Here it is:

Boycott them

After the Egyptian Church became the source of intimidation and terror of the state and the nation at large, and after the Church’s arrogance and contempt for laws, norms, customs and religious legitimacy has became apparent to everyone. This church that is yet under the Shenodian reign, brazenly declares its disregard and contempt for these regulations, all for the sake of accounting to illusions that the church seems to have, intending to prove the existence of their religion in the country, at the expense of truth, the state, and its citizens. Making the church a landmark of destruction to national unity and a threat to social security, after the proven evidence of treachery and treason against the national interest and social security of Egypt.

Rendering the state body helpless despite their knowledge of such treason, giving more reason for the Church to continue with its tyranny, event after another, one of which was the Church challenging state laws and refusing the court verdict that attempted to provide equal divorce laws to muslims and christians. Their ruler ever so arrogantly declared that the State has no rule over the church.

And to make matters worst, there was the accident with the church’s ship of explosives that came from Isreal for a church’s pastor, following the incident with the sisters who converted at will from christianity to islam. Yet the muslim state took no stance towards the criminal behavior of the egyptian church. They delivered the muslim sister Kamilia Zakher, leaving the Church under the orders of its Pharaoh dictator to torment her, and terrorize her like they have done before with Wafaa’ Constantine and others'; all to be able to intimidate and scare any believers, contrary to Allah’s command in his book, that clearly states the protection of Muslim women,(?????? ???????????????? ??????????? ????? ?????????????? ????? ??????????? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?????????? ???????) [???????? :10]

Yet the insistance of the egyptian church on practicing its tyranny, with the clear and apparent weakness seen from the state bodies towards them, leaves us in greater sedition then ever before, putting us at risk of disasters and grave danger. It has become our duty, morally, socially and legally, if we care for the children of egypt, muslims and christians alike, to stand united against this arrogance of religious orders, this canon of violence, and the patriarchal arrogance that threatens our entire nation with its present and future, laying down the foundation for evil within the fabrics of this nation.

It is therefore, a religious duty that Muslims, who are the majority, to do the following:

First: Quickly declare, in every way and method possible, a rejection of the destructive policy adopted by the egyptian church and the state’s apathy towards it.

Second: Take Legal action by suing the Egyptian Churh, requesting that it becomes subject to the authority of Law, that it is not above it, nor can it abandon or openly violate the state constitiution. Remove all Christian Judges from their posts.

Thirdly: All muslims from now on have to boycott any Christian entity with which the Church gains its strength: until the Christians repent and come to their senses, most important of which are:

1- Pharmacies – Hospitals – Private clinics operated or visited by Christians Muslims shall not buy their medicines from them, or enter them, as to not become accomplices in their crimes.

2 – Jewlery and Gold stores, most commonly owned and run by Christians in egypt.

3- Boycotting furniture stores owned by those Nasserites or frequently visited by them.

4- law, engineering and accounting firms.

5- Boycotting private schools owned and managed by them, those who stand quiet by their crimes and their Satan.

6- Egyptian youth, and Amro Elleithy’s and Shaf3y’s grandchildren can start with posting lists of these organization and institutions, to help facilitate the boycotting for the Muslims.

This boycott is the only way to retaliate these crimes and fight them. It is a boycott related to this exceptional situation, forced on us by the church’s arrogance and claimed superiority of their canon.

If it happens that this is put to rest, and they stop torturing the imprisoned women in their church, and the State manages to bring those criminals to justice, then things will go back to the way they were intended.

If the church insists and stands by its current position towards the state and religion, then we warn them that our next step will be civic boycotting to ALL christians in egypt, pushing them to the narrowest of paths, preventing them cohabitation.

We call upon the state, before activating the boycott, to stand against those criminal outlaws, and treat them with certainty.

Egypt should be protected by politicians, rulers and the entire Nation. Perhaps this will show them that the evil of the fitnah is not far away.

If not…there will be great persecution in the land and great corruption.

This situation requires a speedy boycott, to deprive those criminals of the nation they so greedily covet.

Issued by the Azhar Scholars Front, on the the third of Shawal 1421, September 12th, 2010.

In case you missed it, or didn’t want to read all of those big words, the Azhar Scholars Front- Which is a salafist group of Azhar Scholars who don’t actually run things in AlAzhar, but do have resonance and followers in the population, no thanks to the cache the Azhar name brings- have just asked the Egyptian population to not only attack the church through courts and lawsuits, but that it’s the national duty of good muslims to participate in a national economic boycott of all Christians in Egypt, until the church stops being “Uppity”. They want Muslims to boycott all Christian businesses and schools, until the wayward Christians return to their senses and conv..ehh..stop  and I quote- “intending to prove the existence of their religion in the country, at the expense of truth, the state, and its citizens“, cause Christinaity in Egypt is an illusion, except when there are Christian businesses to boycott. It all makes sense if you don’t pay attention.

Now, I don’t have to list the reasons why this is messed up, but I will do that anyway: There is no doubt that there was always sectarian tension in Egypt, but it’s been always hush hush, with everyone insisting that all is well, and that the national fabric is made of bulletproof Kevlar, and other such poppycock. No more. This is the game changer. With a religious authority declaring it’s the duty of muslims to effectively economically boycott all Christian businesses until they carry out their affairs to our liking, and threatening to escalate to a social boycott as well if the Christians don’t kowtow to them, Egypt has officially came out of the sectarian closet. Hell, even the Lebanese, who are world renowned for their sectarianism, never went as far as this in recent memory. This is new, and this is dangerous, because some people will take it to heart, and will start peer pressuring their muslim friends to join, who will in turn peer-pressure their muslim friends, and it can all snowball into a secterian avalanche that could take over the nation. And make no mistake, if it does, there will be violence. This will easily go bad very quickly, which is why I am writing this post.

The government will ignore this story and issue a media blackout, because they will believe that talking about will publicize the call of the ASF and then you might have people who will take it to heart. The problem is, people will take it to heart anyway, because if we learned anything from the Danish Cartoons crisis, if people want information that allows them to go nuts, they will find a way to disseminate it and let it take over their small tiny brains. For example, A friend of mine published the link to attach the statement on his facebook profile, and a friend of his asked him what he should do, since he wants to follow the edict and boycott the Christians, but doesn’t know what to do about the fact that his Christian neighbor happened to donate blood to him at a recent surgery. This is the same population that back in the cartoon days refused insulin for their diabetes because it was made in Denmark and “what the hell will I tell the prophet if I die after taking this?”, so the potential for extremely dangerous stupidity here is nothing less than formidable.

If there is a silver lining to all of this, it forces our hand to confront this now, and show once and for all who is hateful towards egypt’s Coptic minority and who isn’t. Our only hope as a nation is not to ignore this, but to let the world know that this is happening, and forcing the Egyptian society to face its own sectarianism and bigotry and the Egyptian government to nip it in the butt. Condemnation to their call has to be so loud and clear that no such call will be made ever again, and IT HAS TO COME FROM MUSLIMS. And if you are one and you are thinking : ” we shouldn’t do anything but just ignore those idiots”, well, my friend, FUCK YOU! If a small pastor in Florida threatening to burn the Koran garnered Global condemnation from muslims and non-muslims alike, then the call of an influential group of clerics for a national boycott of all of Egypt’s Christians deserves nothing less than that from you. Hell, it deserves more than this. This is a national shame and nothing less than your total outrage is expected. And if you can’t see the outrage, imagine yourself hearing about an american call for the national economic boycott of all Muslims in the US, and see how wrong you will think this is then.

We are staring into the sectarian abyss here people, this is no time to play coy.